7 Arrested In Holdups Along I-95 Police: Gang Robbed Most Of The Motorists

August 26, 1985|By United Press International

MIAMI — A loosely knit gang is responsible for most of the highway holdups of motorists on Interstate 95 since January, said police who arrested seven robbery suspects in the past week.

The suspects include the alleged ringleader, Harvey Tim Akins, who implicated other members of the neighborhood group, Metro-Dade police said Sunday.

Bernard Love, 17, and Gary Wooten, 16, were arrested Saturday and charged with strong-arm robbery and burglary of a conveyance with assault.

Love is a suspect in an Aug. 12 robbery of a woman who was driving along I-95 near Northwest 75th Street. Wooten admitted robbing two female motorists July 29, police said.

Love and Wooten were implicated by Akins, 24, who was arrested Thursday and confessed to ambushing a dozen motorists, police said.

Akins is the unofficial leader of the gang of youths and young men who live in a northwest Miami neighborhood just west of the interstate, said Metro-Dade Sgt. Tony Monheim.

''I can safely say they are responsible for the majority of the I-95 robberies. It's the core group,'' Monheim said. ''There are other fringe members. It's not anything well-planned. It's 'We're going to do a robbery. Do you want to come?' ''

More than 100 highway robberies have occurred since January by youths and young men who held up stranded motorists or hurled tire rims and other objects to halt the vehicles and rob their occupants. Most of the robberies occurred along I-95 in the suspects' neighborhood, but there also have been robberies along State Roads 836 and 112, which intersect the interstate.

The gangs committing the holdups along State Road 112 are offshoots of the first group, Monheim said.

Police identified other members of the group as Zebedee Adderly, 23; his cousin, Harvey Jerome Barber, 22; Willie Favors, 16; and

Otis Brown Jr.

The four were arrested in the past few days and charged in separate incidents. If victims can identify them, they could be charged in other robberies, Monheim said.

Police said the robberies have fallen off sharply since state and local agencies began a crackdown Aug. 13.

Police and state troopers have increased their patrols on the interstate and are using decoys posing as stranded motorists to snare the robbers. City and state road crews have replaced burned-out light bulbs on darkened stretches of the road and have trimmed the bushes and tall weeds that hid the bandits.